


A for Adjustment

by pyalgroundblz (acidtonguejenny)



Series: A for America Verse [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidtonguejenny/pseuds/pyalgroundblz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve in the future. <i>After he'd been awake for awhile, Fury drops by with a box.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A for Adjustment

In the future, he's outed.

After he'd been awake for awhile, Fury drops by with a box.

"Things of yours the military held, what was on you when we chipped you out." He says when Steve asks, nosing gently through the contents. He doesn't hang around for long, leaving Steve staring wearily at the watch with Peggy's picture in it, plastic wrapped and discovered beneath a ratty copy of Tolkien. An attendant (a soldier?) comes while he's laying things out on his cot, olive military tones blending oddly with the evergreen coverlet. 

"Good morning, Captain! You're being released in a few hours." The man beams at him. "I've got your licenses, registrations, account numbers--you've got a nice chunk of backpay to claim."

Steve frowns, struggling to keep up. Fury's promises aside, he honestly hadn't been expecting to be waved through the door. He'd memorized guard rotations in preparation to force his way out. "Released?"

"Sure thing. Your old apartment's ready for you if that's where you want to go, but I'm supposed to tell you S.H.E.I.L.D. with handle it if you prefer a new place."

The soldier leaves and comes back with a bundle: jeans and a button-up, a pair of boots and a jacket. When Steve's dressed, he passes over a set of new tags.

"What about my old ones?"

"They--well," Sheepishly, he extends a hand. "They didn't hold up as well as you."

It's Steve's old, doctored tag, missing its partner and chewed up. The chipped edges snag when he runs his thumb around the rim, trying to make out that familiar 'A'. It occurs to him to wonder, as he scrutinizes a jagged cut that might be one of its legs, if any of the dozens of white-coats that hmmed over him in the past few weeks had found him out.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?" The soldier asks, anxious. 

Steve waves him off. He repacks his returned possessions and shrugs into the jacket, pausing as an afterthought to slide the old tag onto the chain alongside the new ones. The stamped letters on those are so fresh they're sharp, and as he's handling them he spots ALGN: ALPHA beneath his name and birthdate. 

Well, guess that was that.

*

In the future, there are no omegas.

This is Steve's thought, two weeks out of the government-chrome facility. All the time he's spent drifting up and down city streets and he's barely caught a whiff of omega, nor has he seen a beta double-take.

"Suppressants."

Steve blinks. "What?"

"Heat suppressants." Natasha sips her tea, crossing her ankles beneath the table. "First developed in the sixties, released in the eighties, reformed in the nineties. It's an injection omegas take six times a year to repress biannual heats."

Shock. "I don't understand--why would an omega do that? Is it healthy?"

Natasha regards him with a certain humor. "You've never seen an omega in heat before, have you?" She asks, settling her teacup in its saucer. He shakes his head. She shrugs. "Careers. Classes. Some don't like the reproductive urges that come with it. Some are alone."

Steve bothers a broken piece of crouton on his plate. "I hadn't considered that," he admits. "They were excused in the forties."

"They still are," Natasha says. "Heat leave. Their partners too."

He eyes her, and she doesn't blink. He wonders what her alignment is, and if she would tell him if he asked. If he were in the past he could eliminate omega--she wears 'military' like a perfume--but he's not, and he has no idea what may or may not have changed. 

Seventy years ago he wouldn't have guessed most omegas would deny their heats. 

"Thank you for telling me," he remembers to say.

"Of course." She smirks, not hatefully. "I can only imagine what you thought when they let you out."

He'd thought they, humanity, had done something terrible. That the same punishing god that had taken their sense of smell had taken their omegas. 

"I don't know what I thought," he says to his plate.

Steve looks harder after that, on his walkabouts. As he tracks down old businesses and remembered benches he examines the hips of men he passes, looking for the blood-quickening flare that tells of a pelvis built to cradle. He spots a number of possibilities easily with the tight, modern clothing folks wear, and when he settles down near a familiar park sculpture it's with soothed nerves.


End file.
